Kai-Fu Lee is a prominent computer scientist, venture capitalist, and author. He is the chairman of Sinovation Ventures, former President of Google China, and the founder of the generative AI startup 01.AI.
Speech Recognition Research and Big Tech
Lee earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1988. His dissertation resulted in Sphinx, the first speaker-independent continuous speech recognition system, a major breakthrough in signal processing and acoustic modeling. He went on to hold executive positions at Apple (leading speech and multimedia research) and Microsoft (founding Microsoft Research Asia), before serving as President of Google China from 2005 to 2009.
Venture Capital and 01.AI
In 2009, Lee founded Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital firm focusing on Chinese technology startups. He authored the bestseller "AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order". In 2023, he launched 01.AI, a startup that built the open-source Yi-34B model, competing with top US foundational architectures.
